Author: Paolo Baggia (Loquendo)
Date: January 19, 2005.

Nowadays interacting with a banking or finance service in person is often very difficult. The introduction of on-line banking facilities has made it possible for a large number of people to easily perform banking enquiries such as checking account balances and statements, skimming the last transactions, and buying or selling stocks and shares. Unfortunately, even if wireless connections are spreading in many places, we still suffer some limitations, for instance when we are travelling by car or walking. Another important point is to offer the same services to a larger population, which is not accustomed to using technology as well as to enable access to people with disabilities. These motivations are pushing the major banking groups to take an interest to the capabilities offered by applications based on speech technologies.

In Italy, the largest banking group, Banca Intesa, uses an advanced system to let customers check quotes and place trading orders, from any wireline or wireless phone. The project has been called Voice Trading On-line. Following an initial phase in which requirements were defined, the implementation of a pilot service and its assessment by customers has become operational since 2002. Loquendo provided the voice platform (Loquendo's VoxNauta product), which includes Loquendo ASR, Loquendo TTS, VoiceXML 2.0 Interpreter, and OA&M tools, while Citec Voice, Italy's leading company for the design and implementation of speech applications, developed the VoiceXML application, carried out the system integration, and is currently in charge of its maintenance and future voice services upgrades.

“Stocks are a common application nowadays”, says Maurizio Copperi, Senior Project Manager at Citec Voice. “You may want to check your portfolio or a portion of it, perhaps during a volatile stock market gyration, or you can decide to simply check the stock quotes, or to conduct a number of trading and account transactions. Customers like speech recognition because it is easy and quick – no buttons, no codes to remember, simpler menus, and no time wasted on hold – but also because a properly-designed speech recognition system is consistent and predictable.”

“In addition, speech recognition systems can provide important benefits for contact centre managers and agents. With more and more routine inquiries and transactions being handled by speech recognition technology, customer service representatives and their managers can devote more of their time, talents and energies in improving customer relationships and handling more complex customer issues. Banca Intesa is now expanding its selection of speech recognition services, through a carefully managed cycle of design, testing and customer feedback, fully supported by our experts from Citec Voice”, said Copperi. “ For instance, customers actually pay their bills to their utility companies and things like that using telephone banking based on ASR technology”.

A major issue here is the integration of the voice platform into a complex scenario, including ACD (Automatic Call Distributor), CTI servers, databases, voice recording equipment, and legacy systems of the backend. Of course, security is of paramount importance when deploying banking services.

“We at Citec Voice”, said Copperi, “possess the infrastructure, skills, experience and capabilities to cope with all these challenging tasks: our ultimate aim is not only to leverege best-of-breed speech technologies to develop advanced and innovative applications, but also to create new customer value and a great customer experience”.

Another feature under evaluation is speaker verification technology. The customer is enthusiastic about the fact that it can increase the security of the connection with the user, but many security issues are still being addressed. Loquendo’s experience is not limited to this deployment. There are other interesting stories be told: La Caixa, the largest bank in Catalunia and one of the major ones in Spain, and Crèdit Andorrà, the biggest and the most technology-oriented bank in Andorra.